1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an apparatus for providing management support in general, and in particular to an apparatus for providing management support in restaurants. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a smart table for providing management support in a restaurant.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The impression of a customer""s visit to a restaurant depends not only on the food quality of the restaurant but also on the level of service delivered by the employees of the restaurant. When evaluating a restaurant, a customer may factor in how long it takes to be seated at a table, how long it takes for a wait staff to greet and take an order from the customer, how long it takes for the food to arrive at the customer""s table, how long it takes for the wait staff to respond to common requests such as beverage refills, bread refills, etc., and how long it takes the wait staff to deliver the check to the customer""s table. Thus, in order to ensure total customer satisfaction, a restaurant must provide relatively high quality in both its food and service.
The labor force in a typical restaurant, like most other service-oriented businesses, typically suffers from a very high turnover rate, which usually leads to little formal training for most restaurant employees. In addition, when there are multiple restaurants involved, an executive manager, who oversees such restaurants but infrequently visits the premises, has very little information on the day-to-day operations of each restaurant. The executive manager most likely receives only periodic and second-hand information from lower level managers who may have received the data from even lower level supervisors. As a result, there is an undesirable disconnection between the executive manager and the day-to-day operations of the restaurants such that the executive manager is not optimally equipped with information to efficiently apply his/her experience and knowledge to the day-to-day operations of the restaurants. Thus, the executive manager""s extensive experience and knowledge are not effectively utilized, and as a result, the performance of the restaurant is less than optimal.
Moreover, while the process sequence at an individual table, such as seating, ordering, serving, bill presentation, and payment, is relatively predictable, the variable process start point at each table, combined with the variable duration of each process step, create a service management nightmare. Consequently, it would be desirable to provide a method and system to monitor various service qualities of a restaurant such that any manager of the restaurant can benefit from the collected and displayed information to provide better control and management of their employees throughout the day-to-day operations of the restaurant.
In accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention, a smart table includes a patron presence detector, a patron counter, a staff presence detector (which may also receive information from a patron survey pad), and a transmitter. The patron presence detector detects information regarding the presence of patrons sitting at the table. The patron counter counts the number of patrons sitting at the table. The staff presence detector detects information regarding the presence of a staff member serving the table. The above-mentioned detected information are subsequently transmitted by the transmitter to a remotely located data processing system.
All objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent in the following detailed written description.